The other day, 3of3 and I went to the mall. To buy bras. See, I only own 2 bras. I just never think to buy them and when I have to, inevitably someone needs a new backpack or track shoes or another brand new set of golf clubs. Again. Bras are expensive. They have to be budgeted in. And I hate spending money on myself. Anyway, I finally decide that it had to be done, no matter what, so the baby and I head off to the mall. We stop for lunch first and then pop into another store to pick up a pair of pants for me because I am now wearing a size of pants that I ain't never gonna tell you, and then she starts screaming. Ugh.

What stops screaming? Chocolate ice cream cones, that's what.

We head to the undie store and she is now fully chocolate dipped, but she's happy. I have no idea what size bra I'm in these days, so it takes me a minute to look around and grab a few that look like they might work. She's still quiet, and so we press on.

About this point is when I start noticing a few women giving her looks, and then giving me looks, and not the "oh isn't she sweet" looks, either. A salesgirl walked by us and said "GOD. What happened to that kid?" A little toddler hand shoots out from the stroller and not only is it chocolate brown, it's pink on top of that. The little hand grabs a bra beside her. Her little hand leaves what looks like a paint print on the bra. I look in the front of the stroller and holy god in heaven the kid is up to her eyeballs in filth. It appears that she has gotten into my purse while I was looking at undies and grabbed my lipstick, lipstick that costs more than she does, and smeared it all over herself. Her eyelids, her ears, her whole face, the front of her shirt, her Crocs, everything is covered. The stroller is covered.

I. Could. Die.

At this point I decide that I have come this far and I am seeing this shit through. We go into the changing room and I get my top off and a bra on and she starts screaming at the very tip top of her lungs. SCREAMING. BLOOD F*#ING MURDER SCREAMING.

Nothing will stop her. I try to ask her please, to let momma do this one thing, that it's really important and that momma's boobies are so saggy that she's going to start wearing them as boots soon if she doesn't get a new bra or two and dear god child will you just stop with the crying for 2 more minutes and here's another tube of lipst......

And that's when I stopped. Sagging boobs be damned. I cannot replace that lipstick. They don't sell my brand in Canada.

I totally started crying.

What's a girl gotta do to get a bra around this joint?

She screamed all the way out of the mall, across the parking lot, into Safeway where we had to pick up some milk and the screaming continued without letup or sympathy from passers-by until we passed the apples.

*sniffle* Appool? Momma, appool. Wan appool." And that was it. No more crying, no nothing. Especially no bras.